Colm O'Regan: Look out for Cló Gaelach — there are 1,400 years of history in the Gaelic script

You bump into it now in old street signs, county jerseys and, for some reason, parking signs, but it’s rare. Now we’re all getting a bit of a crash course in it. And that’s good because there’s a lot going on with an Cló Gaelach

Directional signage in Drogheda town centre in the Irish language, translated directly into English.

Census 1926: For some of us nerds, we’ve been through this 15 years ago and it’s been a long wait for ‘Season 3’ of our Who Do You Think You Are? In one small way, you can see one change that happened — the bit of Irish. My grandfather is in all three censi (a plural that’s wrong but feels right).

In 1901, he’s at home in West Cork, the return is in English. He’s Conor Horgan. By 1911, he’s out of the home in Castlecomer. He’s an Irish teacher and a lodger. His name is in Irish. It’s almost as if he’s grabbed the pen off his landlady and written in his name in Irish, Conchubhar Ó hArgáin (one of only two Ó hArgáin that year).